“You’ve got this. You’ve trained for it
and you are ready”. Marcia Cleveland’s crew said
this to her before her swim. I said this constantly in my
head on the 30min journey to the start to assuage nerves. My
crew may have said it to me too, they probably did, but I was in my
psych up routine - focused how I would swim. I had the
Republica Song “Ready to go” going around me head
– boy was I psyched!

What was your swim plan?

I had both a swim strategy and a plan. Being mindful of
the following quotes I was ready to improvise:

“However beautiful the strategy, you should
occasionally look at the results.” – Winston
Churchill

“In preparing for battle I’ve found that
plans are useless, but planning is essential.” – Dwight
Eisenhower

What was your strategy?

Negative split the Channel. Seriously. I joked about
it in training and observed that my fastest and strongest swimming
was at the end of long swims and/or on the 2nd day of back to back
long swims. I’d pushed the envelope repeatedly to see
what happened and my body had felt comfortable. I’d
evaluate my pace when I reached the SZ (Separation Zone) and I
planned to pick it up. It gave me a psychological boost to
think I would be stronger in the second half, and it would prevent
me going too fast early on.

Be swift. Set a good time. Tommy was swimming after me,
and he had been fast in our recent training swims, so I needed to
crush it. We may be best friends but we both swim to
win! It is highly condition dependent, but Nick and Anita had
both gone under 12 hours so I knew that was possible for me.

What was your plan?

Start at and maintain the pace I swam at on all my longer swims
(4 hours and up). Stroke rate about 50 per minute (25 each
arm). No surprise here.

Relentless focus on efficiency and rhythm. DPS (distance
per stroke) throughout. Early quick bilateral breathing,
reaching for France before each catch, high elbows, early vertical
forearm, roll from the hips with a 2 beat kick. Efficiency
was going to matter a lot; Anita had taken ~50,000 strokes with a
stroke rate of 71 so +/- 10% of efficiency is a lot of strokes
saved or added. My crew were to show me a whiteboard with
“DPS” and “Long and Strong” every 30mins to
refocus me.

Maintain my body and mind:

Take all the feed at every feed (water, amino acids,
carbohydrate and electrolytes). My feed was 20 fl oz of GU
Roctane at 2.5x strength after 2 hours and thereafter hourly.

Protect the shoulders by making sure I was retracting my
scapular at the catch on each stroke.

Minimize salt water in the mouth (continuous exhale).
Otherwise by hour 5 your tongue is going to double in size and
become raw. Not a show stopper but not pleasant either.

Monitor my hydration, or more simply put, check I am
peeing. If not I need more water at the feeds.

Monitor my breathing. Switch up to breathing every 5, 7 or
9 strokes periodically to check my lung capacity. I’d
always worried about salt water inhalation and/or Swimming Induced
Pulmonary Edema (SIPE). SIPE is where fluid from your body
diffuses into your lungs, drowning you from within –
it’s insidious and very dangerous. Compression of the
body is the major factor (i.e. being submerged for a long
time). The most at risk people are scuba divers and wetsuit
swimmers (it is common in triathletes) because the neoprene
compresses the body in addition to the water. Channel
swimmers are at an elevated risk simply because of the shear length
of time they are submerged in the water. I’d been OK on
my 7 and 6 hour training swims even though I had been struggling
with a persistent chest infection.

Take prophylactics. Anti-seasickness medication because
the night swim would be disorienting. Anti-emetic medication
since I’d struggled with nausea in training from the chest
infection. Anti-histamine to minimize the localized reaction
to jelly fish stings. All of these are on WADA’s
approved list and were recommended by doctors who had swum the
Channel. I did not take any pain killers beforehand, but they
were available to me on the boat.

Positive thoughts. I confess I had an armoury of stick and
carrot thoughts. For example I wouldn’t be able to look
any of my swimmers in the eye if I quit (stick!) and finishing will
inspire people to do things they might not otherwise (carrot!) plus
I could enjoy a beer and not training in cold water for a while
after I finished (double carrot!)

The Swim

It felt like a long way to Samphire Hoe beach, but looking back
at the swim tracker the distance is tiny compared with the
Channel. As the black bulk of Samphire Hoe seawall loomed
ahead, one of the Pilot’s crew stuck his head out and said
“10 minutes”.

I was already wearing my swim gear under my Dryrobe so all I had
to do was shed the warm clothing, attach lights (green tail light
on a line from my jammers, white head light to the back of my
goggle strap) and get greased with thick layers of Vaseline under
my arms, around my neck and on my chin. By the time I’d
done this, with the help of my crew, we were there alongside the
far end of Samphire Hoe.

You don’t start from the Hoe itself as this is man-made,
instead you start from the pebble beach just to its west. Swims
used to start from Shakespeare Beach but a recent cliff fall has
left some underwater obstructions so the pilots now all use
Samphire Hoe Beach. (A “Hoe” is a bit of land
that sticks out, “Samphire” since the edible plant
“Rock Samphire” grows there. It was formed
initially when they blew up the cliff in the 1840s to build a
railway line to Dover, more recently it received 4.9 million cubic
metres of Chalk Marl spoil from when the Channel Tunnel was
built. It is now a nature reserve and park)

The previous swim my Pilot had piloted had taken longer than
expected - I gathered some of this other swimmer’s crew had
delayed the return by nearly an hour. I didn’t know if
this was why all but one of the other Pilot boats heading out had
left already, or if this was the right time for me to start
anyway. I couldn’t ask my Pilot as he was extremely
busy – it was pitch black and we were close to a rocky shore
with strong currents (when I crewed for Nick the year before, one
of other the Pilots hit a rock at this point and had to be towed
back to Dover by another Pilot. Scuppering two swims before
they started). As the beach came into view we could see there
was a boat dropping a swimmer off and for safety reasons we waited
until their swimmer had swum clear.

Samphire Hoe beach by day and by night:

At this point I made my first mistake by standing in swimwear
for 20 mins. The wind was blowing and it was cold. When
I was told to get into the water and swim to the beach I suddenly
realized I was chilled, not what you want at the start of a long,
cold swim. I was worried I would not be able to warm up.
What if this became a 15 hour shivering swim from hell?
I remember shouts of encouragement and Robbie yelling “catch
that other swimmer up” as I stepped off the boat and the
blackness swallowed me. WARM! The water was warmer than the
air! I was relieved and then annoyed at myself for allowing a
negative thought in my mind. As I took my first strokes
toward the shore each hand and arm created a shower of brilliant,
green sparks. Bioluminescent plankton! The sparks ran
along my arm as I my hand entered and I reached for the catch, then
I could just see a green cloud of sparks erupting around my hand
and forearm as the power phase of the stroke started.
Fabulously entertaining.

Swimming into the beach to start

The distant, underwater whump and rasp of the waves on the
pebble beach got louder and I could just make out the pebbles
before I crashed into the shore. Weirdly this was the bit I
was dreading. I hate walking barefoot on pebble beaches
– it hurts, and the waves throw them into a steep pile of
scree that collapse as you try to walk on them. Eventually I
staggered clear and turned around. I took a few seconds for
myself, looking around and recording all I could see – the
dark mass of the cliffs behind me, some moonlight leaking around
the edge of a cloud in front of me, Anastasia lying underneath the
moon a couple of hundred yards offshore with her running lights on,
the glow in the sky to my left above the bulk of Samphire Hoe was
Dover, Folkestone’s lights were to my right and in the
distance at my 11 o’clock I could see a cloud glow in the
sky that must be Calais. Within the Channel I could see red
blinking lights marking the boundary of the South West shipping
lane and warning of Varne Ridge, and by golly there were a lot of
ships out there. The swimmer that had left ahead of me was
now being swept to left by the inshore current judging by where his
Pilot’s boat was.

I remember saying to myself “This is it. This is
really it Jonesy. This is what you’ve been training
for. Now go do it” and with that I raised my arm above
my head staggered down the pebbles and fell “splat”
into the water with precisely zero grace. From that moment
forward, and no matter what I tried to dislodge it, the tune that
was stuck in my head was “Broken Stones” by Paul
Weller. All because of the first verse:

Like pebbles on a beach
Kicked around, displaced by feet
Oh, like broken stones
They're all trying to get home

I did manage to displace it briefly with Dory’s:

Just keep swimming

Just keep swimming

[repeat ad infinitum ad nauseam]

But quickly decided Paul Weller (grumpy musician and singer,
songwriter that he is) was preferable. None of the tunes on
my Channel playlist accompanied me on my swim.

Back on Anastasia the Observer, my Pilot and my crew all logged
the time at which I raised my arm. It was 00:02 on
August 8th– right at the top of the tide –
and the clock was now ticking.

I swam out towards the pre-agreed left side of my boat and once
I got there Anastasia kept pace with me while I maintained a
constant distance off her port side matching her direction.

The swim beside the boat

The Channel is split into these shipping zones:

British In-shore Waters (BIW)

After marveling at the bioluminescence for a bit I concentrated
on finding a smooth rhythm and not going too fast. I was
worried my stroke rate was too high and I focused internally on the
information coming from my body.

Sight. No lights except for the boat’s running
lights and the Port of Dover to my left. Ahead and down the
water was dark and though I still had the bioluminescence effect it
wasn’t as powerful anymore.

Breathing. I switched to breathing every 5 instead of
every 3. Less comfortable, but perfectly possible, so my stroke
rate was probably OK and I switched back to breathing every
3. Sometimes I wasn’t able to find air to breathe when
I turned my head – I could either see the water, or feel it
on my face – so I just skipped that breath.

Muscles. They felt loose except for where the PT had been
working on my right shoulder and back. Here they were
surprisingly sore, but it wasn’t an injury and they’d
settle down as they warmed up (or be masked by new pain later) so I
ignored them.

Stroke. Big Problem. I couldn’t roll properly
and my stroke felt flat and short. I refocused… but
still it was awful. I mean really awful. The waves
seemed to be at just the wrong frequency and coming from multiple
directions. What had felt OK ish swimming in was difficult
swimming out. The seawall of Samphire Hoe would be reflecting
waves across and in my direction and this probably accounted for
the confused feel of the waves and it was disconcerting. I
couldn’t swim for 12 hours like this. It was severely
impacting my progress and I felt like I was swimming uphill.
Give me big waves and rough conditions anytime. Although it
is tiring I love blatting through rough water and taking on big
waves. This was annoying chop – waves just big enough
to slap you in the face when you try to breathe, and tip you when
you try to roll….

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!

A searing pain erupted on the right of my chest and extended
down to my waist and my side. It felt like I’d been
ripped open and since the worst a shark in the Channel will do is
“lick you” (to quote Eddie), it really meant only meant
one thing…a jellyfish.

The pain gave me something new to think about, it faded from
seriously painful to a constant burning pain within a few minutes
but didn’t diminish further. I wasn’t to know
this at this point but this particular jellyfish sting would hurt
for 9 hours. I swam on. I couldn’t see them to
avoid them so there was no point worrying about it. I
didn’t want one in the face, and there was no point looking
forward so I kept my head low and hoped that as I extended my arms
underwater that would protect my face. A few minutes passed
and then I felt something half solid, but of significant mass bump
off my elbow. I’ve mused since that different nerves
signal at different speeds, plus there’s interpretation time
in the brain, and of course the length of time it takes the
stinging cells of a jellyfish to fire their toxin into your
skin….I distinctly remember thinking “oh no” and
then “maybe it was a piece of drift wood….?” And
then pain in my elbow and arm erupted into my brain.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Again, sting was also to be painful as hell for 9 hours. This
really wasn’t fun. I was swimming rubbish –
deriving zero pleasure from the feel of it. I was tired from
lack of sleep. My chest, right side and right arm and elbow
were in agony from jellyfish stings. Jellyfish that I had no
chance of avoiding. The sun wasn’t going to come up for
5.5 hours (and when it did it was supposed to be cloudy and
raining). I was less than 15 mins into the swim that I knew
would be physically more painful towards the end. In fact is
the water starting to feel cold? And…
And… And... I didn’t think I could take 12
hours of this.

Whoosh! Demons entered my head. ”You could
just get out. Swim to the boat and touch it. Game over. Thank
everyone for coming. It’s been a good experience.
You’ve learnt from it. It was too tough. People
will understand. You’ve been through a lot. Or
make up an excuse – your hip flexors were agony where you had
the hip surgery, your shoulder gave out, the chest infection you
have been battling for months was making breathing too
hard…”

Most Channel swimmers will say they had difficult patches on
their successful crossing.

The others are lying.

The oft spoken adage is that swimming the Channel is 80% mental
and 20% ‘the rest’. Given that that 20% is a lot
of physical training and acclimatization, you get a sense of the
size of the mental challenge. A large chunk of the training
is mental toughness – how else do you keep plugging on for 6
or 7 hours? Varying training locations and swimming with
groups like the DCT helps to minimize boredom but you still have to
motivate yourself to get in and then keep on swimming for hour
after hour.

I’d played with letting the demons in on the qualifying
swim back in April, and a few times in Dover, and it was scary how
quickly you find yourself losing the will to keep going. If
you let your guard down and one negative thought enters your brain,
it takes an order of magnitude (or more) of positive thoughts to
quash that thought, pull out of the mental dive and climb up out of
that dark place.

How did you recover?

The power of positive thought. You need to train mentally
too. I’d made my goal of swimming the Channel public
and shared it with all of you, and I’d had the experience of
digging myself out of mental lows following the physical problems
and surgeries I’d encountered and endured in the previous 10
months. Pick whatever works for you, but these worked for me:

You lot! I can’t let you down and I can’t
quit because then I wouldn’t be able to look you in the
eye. There’s a lot of you out there – swimmers,
masters swimmers, coaches, friends, colleagues, my boys, extended
family, charities. I cycled through names and faces in my
head.

I’m not letting some gelatinous lumps of venomous snot
stop me. I can blow stuff out of my nose that’s more
appealing and intelligent.

Tommy will swim after me. He’ll crush it.
I can’t quit.

I’ve swum for 7 hours. Just do the same and
I’ll be over halfway and in daylight.

Swim to the next crew message (or feed). This chunking
technique is great – a 12 hour swim is just 12 x 1 hour swims
or 24 x 30min swims. Focus on just that hour or 30
mins. Then do another one.

Break the Channel into geographical chunks and focus on the
bit you are in.

Nick swam it in 11 hours 40mins, Nicki (Nick’s wife)
swam it in 13:13. Anita swam it in 11:58. You can swim this in
around that time – you’ve swum with all of them and
they managed it.

You’ve trained for this. Channel the pain and
anger into forward momentum.

Lots of visualization exercises about how it is going to
feel to reach France

Quitting isn’t going to inspire anyone

There’s a lot of money I’m raising for the Y and
Cancer Research riding on this – I can’t stop

I had just recovered my mindset when my crew held up the
whiteboard and shone a flashlight on it. The fact that
someone was communicating with me was an additional huge
boost. I couldn’t see who was who on the boat (except
my father in law who was in a neon yellow cycling jacket) but they
were wearing all sorts of glowing necklaces and flashing lights
which was amusing.

It took me ages to read the board as I hadn’t anticipated
they would be high up ahead on the prow of Anastasia, instead of
level with me and low down on Mighty Mo. They were holding it
over their heads like a boxing match “round X” sign and
the flashlight was so close to the board that it just made a
skidmark of light across it. After nearly breaking my neck
trying to read it I realized it said “DPS 5”. So
in 5 mins I will have done a 30 min chunk, only 30 mins until the
next message. Only 23 to go in total and in another 3 of
these I’ll get a feed and more detailed human contact.

To give me something to think about I broke the swim into
geographic and time based bits:

Swim until the 1st feed (2 hours in)

Get the “SWL” sign (South West Lane – aka
“the British Shipping Lane”) just before my
2nd feed

2nd feed (3 hours in)

3rd feed (4 hours in)

4th feed

Get the “SZ” sign (separation zone)

5th feed

Get the “NEL” sign (North East Lane – aka
“the French Shipping Lane”)

6th, 7th,
8th feed

Get the “FIW” sign (French inshore waters)

9th feed

10th feed (at 11 hours in and my last if I
was going to swim at or under 12 hours)

Then I did the same exercise assuming a 14 hour
swim. This gave me a score card to compare myself with
and lots to think about. I was sure I’d make good
progress for 7 hours since I’d swum that long already, and if
things started to go wrong thereafter - well I’d deal with
that when I got there but since I’d be over halfway that
would boost me anyway, and if I was close enough to France then
I’d keep swimming even if I had to do 1 arm butterfly for the
last few miles. I wasn’t going to stop.

There were more dark moments during the first 2 hours but by the
time it came to my first feed the water no longer felt confused, I
had a rhythm going and the other couple of jellyfish stings I
picked up were annoyances that weren’t anywhere near as
painful, nor did their sting pain last long.

I could see ships crossing left to right ahead of me in the
English Lane, ferries entering and leaving Dover off to my left and
I wondered whether the tide would push me over the cross Channel
ferry lanes before or after I reached the first shipping lane.

Then time just passed. It happens when I’m on a long
swim – I get absorbed into listening to my breathing, the
feel of the water flowing around me, and fine tuning my
stroke. I enter a trance, a deeply relaxing, meditative
state. I’d get kicked out of my trance every 25 mins for a
“DPS 5” and every other of these had a feed at the
end. But I’d soon drop back into it.

First feed

It was easy to tell it was feeding time. I had a 5
min warning with the DPS sign, I could see activity in my crew on
deck and then someone held the feed bottle up and shone a torch on
it. I swam in to about 6ft away from Anastasia, instead of my
more usual 20ft, and my crew tossed the feed bottle (with glowstick
and float attached) into the water about 10ft in front of me.
Perfect! I grabbed the bottle, rolled onto my back, continued
kicking my legs and went straight for the solid treat in the
screw-off base. Never have jellybabies tasted so good!
At that point we realized that Anastasia didn’t have a sea
anchor or drogue out the back like Mighty Mo does and she kept
going with her momentum. I couldn’t kick hard enough to
stay with the boat and to my exasperation drifted off the
stern. My crew were up in the bow. I couldn’t
hear them due to the distance and my ear plugs, and I
couldn’t see them as I was on my back kicking. I was
also discovering that eating and drinking 20+ fl oz rapidly, while
kicking and trying breathe isn’t easy. Plus I
didn’t have much breath left after chugging the liquid.
I remember yelling to my crew and trying to get as much information
over as possible before immediately resuming swimming, not waiting
for acknowledgement:

“I can’t hear you [breath] Come to the stern
[breath] Please hold the sign low by the water [breath] I
can’t read it [breath] Stroke rate?”

The point of a feed is to feed, and if you are swimming hard you
are breathing hard. It’s not supposed to be a pleasant
chat. It took a lot of effort to use the extra word
“please” but since I was very dependent on them I
needed to be nice!

A little while later the whiteboard appeared closer to the water
with “SR 49”. I gave them a thumbs up to
acknowledge I’d read it. This was a pleasant
surprise. I’m normally about 52 for stroke rate but I
thought I was nearer 60 and was worried I was going to burn
out. Anita had a stroke rate of 71 all the way across but I
can’t swim like that! The whole world felt a lot better
at that point. The last of my worries had been removed.

I got the “SWL” sign about 35 mins after my first
feed (2:33 into the swim). This was good. I
was at or under 12 hour pace at this point by my reckoning.

South West Lane (SWL)

The SWL section of the swim passed without incident (shipping
incident, there were some jellyfish incidents). I swam from
feed to feed and very occasionally I would get stung but these
subsequent stings were only painful for a few minutes. My
crew worked out that a sudden hard and prolonged kicking of the
legs meant I’d been stung and was trying to distract myself.
I also wanted to kick the gelatinous little buggers.
Sometimes I’d yell “OW” during a breath so my
crew would know this wasn’t plain sailing. I’m
afraid bad words came out on the worst stings, some of them above
the surface. The worse the sting the worse the word L

I noticed that now I only had 2 or 3 crew instead of 4.
This meant they were taking advantage of Anastasia’s luxury
to get some sleep. One figure remained on deck with her eyes
on me throughout the whole swim. Jacqui. I love my
wife!

After my fourth feed I could sense it was beginning to get
lighter – black became deep blue. Sunrise was still
over an hour away but it gave me something to look forward
to. It meant I could now see the venomous, snot blobs and
occasionally one would suddenly appear right in front of me causing
me to rear out of the water and pitch to the side.

Separation Zone (SZ)

I wasn’t sure when I left the SWL and entered the
SZ. I found out later it was 4:45 into the
swim. My crew used a megaphone, instead of the whiteboard, to
tell me. There was a lot of comedy value in the megaphone, it
certainly kept my crew entertained, but I couldn’t hear
anything coherent. Still, a happy crew is a good crew.

I realized I must be close to it when I noticed the mats of
seaweed appearing – I got freaked out by one I swam straight
into thinking it was a huge jellyfish (everything else of substance
I’d encountered so far had stung me). Some of these
mats were quite big – I remember swimming across/through one
that must have been over 8ft in diameter.

The problem with these mats is what is trapped under them.
Jellyfish! Fortunately there was enough pre-dawn light, and
the water was crystal clear, so by looking ahead underwater I could
scan for them and avoid them. Jellyfish don’t have a
nervous system so it pointless to hope they were suffering - but I
still did. You would have too! From above this small
part of my swim probably resembled an elongated aquatic game of
Pac-man as I kept changing direction abruptly to go around, and
thread myself between, the jellyfish encrusted mats.

At my 4th feed I had it confirmed we were in the
SZ and some mental math told me that I was on sub 11 hour pace
(depending on where I was in the SZ) which was really positive
news.

North East Lane

I got the “NEL” sign 5:16 into the swim and
gave my crew two thumbs up. My body felt good so I decided to
push for that negative split and get as a good a time as
possible. I don’t think my crew noticed anything
different (except perhaps Anita). I still had 5 hours to swim
so I kept my stroke rate at 49 but under the water I was reaching
for every last millimeter of catch, getting every last degree of
early vertical forearm and driving harder through the power section
and finish of the stroke. My crew took a short video of the
sunrise about an hour later and I can see I was getting huge
coverage from each stroke.

The sun finally rose at 5:29. It was a stunning sunrise, and such
a welcome sight.

But I had barely enough time to yell “SUN!” before
it promptly disappeared behind clouds which just got thicker and
thicker, ultimately turning into rain.

This bit of the Channel feels like it takes forever. The
lane is over 6 miles wide at that point, getting wider if you
haven’t made FIW by the Cap. The tide at that point in
the Channel had turned as you can see from my swim track. The
fact that it wasn’t low tide back at Dover for another 2
hours seemed bizarre to me as I was less than 20 miles away.
My body moved over 10 miles in this section as I was swept quickly
to the South East.

There was also a new worry. When I crewed for Nick in 2016
I got to listen to the radio communications with the two
coastguards (you have to radio in when you enter and leave each
shipping lane, and each swim has to have been pre-approved by the
British Coastguard). The British Coastguard was all very
chipper, with a proper accent, and it was possible to hear shipping
being alerted and re-routed to different sides of the SWL.
The British Coastguard also wished our swimmer good luck (as did
several of the ships). On the French side it was the complete
opposite. I assume it’s because France has banned
Channel swimming rather than it being simply due to being
typically, annoyingly unhelpful (a view the British have long held
about the French). The pilot kept radioing in to the French
Coastguard to report they had entered the NEL and that they had a
swimmer in the water, but there was no reply until about the
5th attempt when over the radio came the reply:

“’Yes I [h]ear you, but I don’t
care”

I swear I could hear a typically huge Gallic shrug in the
background.

Subsequently we were nearly run over by a tanker that only
altered course at the last minute, just as the pilot was just about
to pull our swimmer.

Fortunately there were no big ships passing near us, which also
meant there weren’t any to goggle at either. They
passed miles away which is a bit depressing when you see them so
far ahead of you and you get a sense of how much further there is
to swim.

There were some good Channel ferry shots here too!

The daylight made it abundantly clear to me how many jellyfish
there were and though I was now seeing more of them (they were
deeper down or off to my side) the number in my direct path
hadn’t changed.

Smarting from jellyfish stings and feeling some muscle pain I
stuck my head out of the water and asked for painkillers at my 5th
feed. My crew dissolved some soluble acetaminophen into my
feed, but it hadn’t quite de-fizzed and the internal pressure
popped the lid off the bottle causing me to lose half of my feed
and the painkillers. My crew gave me another feed 30 mins
later – but no acetaminophen since they weren’t sure
how much I’d had. This time they’d poked
ibuprofen liquid gels into pieces of banana in my treat container.
I worried they would feed me again in 30mins but I
needn’t have, the next feed was another hour away. The
painkillers made a big difference in my comfort, though I found out
later the Observer got concerned that this was “the beginning
of the end” as it can be a sign of trouble.

About this time my boys and the UK had woken up and the messages
of support being relayed to me switched across the Atlantic.
I was, still am, and will continue to be, hugely appreciative of
all of these messages. Thank you!

French In-shore Waters (FIW)

As I got close to this transition France was clearly
visible. I could see the white chalk cliffs of Cap Blanc Nez
in front of me and I knew that Cap Gris Nez was to my right but
hidden behind the pilot boat. I received my
8th feed and some more ibuprofen after 8:30 of
swimming time and 4 minutes later “FIW” was displayed on
the whiteboard.

I celebrated with a stroke of butterfly (not a good idea with
tired arms at that point) and kept on pushing. At its closest
point the NEL is only 3 miles from Cap Gris Nez – and now I
could see the Cap in front and to my right. In my head I was
thinking that maybe I only had another 80 or 90 mins of swimming
and that just getting under 10 hours could be on the cards, I was
certainly going to make it. It got emotional from this point
forward. I cried into my goggles a couple of times.

Thump.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!

I had stuck my right hand into and through a nasty
jellyfish. Got to keep pushing on! I had my
9th feed at 9:30 of swimming and I took it fast.
The Cap appeared to be slightly to my left now which was a bad
thing. I could see the rocks at the foot of the cliff and
people on the top at this point – surely it wouldn’t
take much longer? I swam as hard as I could but it
wasn’t to be. The Cap slid past to my left and then
seemed to get stuck there – not getting closer and not
getting further away. The water was feeling confused and I
was being buffeted but it didn’t seem to be waves. Each
stroke was hurting a lot now and my crew were urging me to pick up
the pace. Still the Cap wouldn’t move. I was
swimming like I was racing a mile – I started to worry about
sudden exhaustion. A friend from the long distance training
camp in April had swum the week prior. He got within a mile
of the Cap only to suddenly implode and have to stop his swim.

So frustrating! If we’d been right on the nose that
would have been just under 10 hours – potentially! The
last point on both these plots is 9:55.

I know now from crewing for Tommy, when he ended up in this
position, that the velocity of the water flowing over the reefs of
rock on the bottom cause roils of water to erupt on the surface and
it was these that were creating the buffeting. I also know
now that there was a large eddy of water spinning away behind the
Cap – ripping around at 6+ knots. I was battling
against this, not making headway until I slipped further to the
South West and the current was no longer in my face. Once I
entered it I had to be quick enough to get through it and to the
coast before I was swept back out past the Cap. Worse –
if the tide changed I could end up on the other side with a 3 mile
swim into Wissant.

After what felt like an eternity I saw the Pilot’s crew
readying the tender to accompany me into the water – but then
they went back into the cabin for several minutes. Finally
they re-emerged and one of them put out in the tender. I
became aware Anita had entered the water and was just behind
me. This meant there were only a few hundred metres
left! The tears were really flowing now. Relief.
Exhaustion. Pain. Happiness. Pride (especially at having overcome
my physical difficulties). Tiredness

It still seemed to take forever – and I was really
sprinting now. Something black and white on the surface shot
past from left to right, right in front, scaring me almost to a
standstill. For some reason I thought it was a wakeboarder
but another longer look revealed it was a buoy and it dawned on me
just how fast the current was ripping along the shore.
Suddenly I could see a boulder below me, then another, then another
closer to the surface, then bloody enormous boulders rearing out of
the water in front of me. Each the size of a vehicle.
No sandy beach fairytale landing here. There was no emotion
at this point – I was 100% focused on trying to land.
But where to land? I swam in to a sloping slab in front of me and
touched it.

I think the clock stopped then but I was determined to clear the
water, so ignoring the warnings about leaving my DNA smeared all
over the rocks, I climbed out, fell over, slid back down the rock
and into the water - leaving my DNA smeared on it

My second attempt was better and I managed to clear the water
and pump my fist in the air - though I had to maintain 3 points of
contact throughout since I wasn’t used to being upright.

My time was 10 hours 28 mins. I’d said I would be
happy if made it across, and I would be ecstatic if I swam under 12
hours, but I had not envisioned going under 11 hours. I was
super happy.

Then what?

There wasn’t much to see where I landed – certainly
nothing to collect. The swim was done and there was no point
hanging around – back to the boat seemed a really great idea
at that point. I really wanted a big mug of tea.

Back in the water I got a hug from Anita and declined a ride
back to Anastasia in the tender. I really enjoyed the
swim Anastasia – EZ Free (with some EZ backstroke that felt
wonderful to the arms).

Back at the boat and climbing the ladder I finally realized it
was raining hard. I wanted to stand in it and feel it in my
mouth – I was all done with salt water. On board I got
a huge hug from Jacqui, Robbie and my father-in-law and we were
underway back to Dover before I managed to get clothes on. I
had the mug of tea I had been dreaming of, and then a beer that
Jacqui had brought, I don’t remember much else about the ride
back to Dover. The observer and half my crew caught up on
sleep and I just sat there, warm and cozy with a big goofy smile on
my face.

As we got into Dover Marina and around to Anastasia’s
berth I heard a big cheer, looked up and was surprised to see all
my family and friends had turned out – almost all of them in
Shark Shirts. I confess I was fighting back tears while my
crew gathered everything up and decanted themselves and all the kit
from the boat.

It was hugs all around on the dock, big thanks to Eddie and his
crew, then prosecco (not champagne!?) then back to the house.
I grabbed a swift warm shower and then joined everyone at the pub
next door where I practically inhaled 2 pints of beer and
demolished the best tasting curry I’ve ever had.

I was still wired after the swim so while the rest of my crew
slept after lunch I took care of something I’d wanted to do
for months. I went to the village barber and had all the
fluff on my shaved off. Back at the house I stayed awake
until 7pm before finally retiring and sleeping for 12
hours straight – enjoying my first sleep in over a year
without some kind of Channel anxiety.

How did your swim time rank?

Surprisingly well. If I might permit myself a quick toot
on my own trumpet: on that evening of 8th August,
with the CS&PF and a time of 11:58, Anita was the fastest
female solo swimmer and my time of 10:28 meant I was the
fastest male solo swimmer. Overall (CS&PF and CSA) at
that point I had the 3rd fastest swim of 2017 (including relays).

To say I was happy would be putting it mildly. All the
more so considering the state I was in 10 months earlier - crippled
and in hospital. Thank you to all of you who were cheering me
on!

What next?

Tommy contacted Eddie next day to arrange his swim. When
Eddie asked what his pace would be Tommy didn’t miss a beat
and answered “10:27”

The season ended in early October so there were more swims to
come. Where we finished, the overall statistics,
Tommy’s swim, and the aftermath of our
adventure…. …all in the next and final
issue.